


Give Me Myself Again

by fiach_dubh



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Alcohol Misuse, Anal Fingering, Anal Sex, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Drunkenness, Fellatio, Hurt/Comfort, I promise a happy ending, Loving Sex, M/M, Mental Health Issues, Molly comes back, Oral Sex, PTSD, Recovery, Sex, Slow Burn, Slow recovery, Teasing, Trauma, back from the dead, canon character death, fucked up coping mechanisms, giving characters I like my issues, learning how to person, people having emotions in a series of rooms, two fucked up people figuring stuff out, unhealthy sexual behaviour
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-07-02
Updated: 2019-07-12
Packaged: 2020-06-03 00:30:42
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,013
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19452664
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fiach_dubh/pseuds/fiach_dubh
Summary: Molly came back from the dead. He's kind of fucked up about it.Caleb's just kind of fucked up in general.You can't fix people with love. But maybe you can lean on each other while you fix yourselves.





	1. Watching Us Wither

**Author's Note:**

> Hey, so Molly is in a bad place in the first few chapters of this fic (though he slowly gets better) and he's dealing in super unhealthy ways. If depictions of mental illness, self-sabotaging/destructive behaviour, and substance misuse is likely to trigger you - read something else.
> 
> I've not been keeping up with CR. But I wanted to write something where Molly came back and Caleb and Molly came together and admit their love. I just couldn't figure them NOT being absolute messes to start with. So here we are.

They’re both kinda fucked up. It’s a thing. 

Caleb is kinda fucked up. It’s obvious, really, in what he says, how he carries himself, the tense and nervy energy around him. He’s fucked up and he hates himself but oh, Molly doesn’t care. He doesn’t.

Because Molly sometimes has dreams of grave dirt in his mouth (twice, now, twice he’s woken up in his own grave), and he doesn’t feel quite stable in the world either. Feels untethered and like any step might be off a cliff. 

He just - He just wants to feel here again. He wants to feel real. This always happened to him before, now and then, the huge screaming emptiness overwhelming, and he could make it go away with sex, or drugs, or sex AND drugs for prefernce.

It’s harder now, the second go around. It feels worse. It feels like joy is hard to come by and harder to leave behind, it feels like the grave is open behind him and waiting, waiting.

And when it’s too much he goes out, and he gets drunk/high/fucked (any combination) and he comes back and sometimes Caleb is there and they just. They just sit. Molly talks about nothing (never the grave, never) and Caleb listens and watches him with those skittish blue eyes and Molly feels - he feels close to OK. He’s OK with not being OK, because Caleb is very much… not OK. Around Caleb he doesn’t need to be… well. He doesn’t need to be recovered.

He wants Caleb, of course. Of course he does. How could he not? Thinks about him a lot, touches himself about Caleb, Caleb, Caleb. He thinks about Caleb when he’s fucking someone else, all the time. He used to believe in being present with whichever soul or souls were sharing your body - but hey. Who cares any more. These one night stands - they aren’t really about sex or pleasure. They’re about -

They’re about hurting, or about coming, or about being touched, or about being looked at. They’re about being here, and alive, and physical. Like hands on him, touching him, can keep him anchored and solid, can make it so he is less a ghost just clinging to flesh.

He doesn’t want to do that to Caleb, though he needs thinking of Caleb to actually get off. So maybe he’s a little fucked up too. Ha, who isn’t.

-

Thing is, Molly doesn’t know how to manage this at all. Thing is, sometimes he wants to ruin everything, burn it down. If he makes it collapse, he won’t be on edge, waiting for it.

-

It’s another one of those days. They’ve been in town a few days, ok beds and overpriced drink, but fuck it. He’s been having the dreams more this week. It’s about a year since he came back, so eighteen months since he - left. And he woke up choking this morning, the taste of thick sour earth in his mouth, and he had to scrub his mouth and the taste is still there. He knows he looks like shit; he knows most people won’t care. It’s evening now, and he wants any taste in his mouth other than the earth he - the earth he was buried under. 

So he smiles as wide and old-Molly as he can manage, makes some noises about needing a little debauchery, you get it, ha ha, all fun and games. All easy-casual I just want some fun in my life. Not like there’s something really wrong with him that scares him and that he doesn’t want to think about it any more, at all.

So he goes out, and he doesn’t have any standards at all, and it doesn’t take too long before he’s being fucked over some - some backroom table by some stranger he doesn’t know or much like, wondering why he’s even here. He tries to like it for its own sake, he does. He would have, before. This would have been great, before.

It’s not now. He pictures Caleb. The fantasy is - innocent, compared to what’s happening. Caleb is mostly dressed, only his shirt is unbuttoned and rumpled. He is smiling, one of his rare real smiles, that Make Molly feel soft and warm. In Molly’s head, Caleb leans in to kiss him. His lips are dry and warm. His stubble scrapes across Molly’s skin. His hands are gentle on Molly’s face.

He comes like that, and lets the stranger thinks it was his cock. Who cares. It’s not like Molly will see him again.

-

He gets back, and Caleb is still up, sitting in front of the fire in the Inn’s main room, reading. Molly stands, out of line of sight, and just watches for a little while. The gold and red of the fire brings out the same colours in Caleb’s hair. It brushes his cheekbones like a kiss. Molly doesn’t know what brought him back. No-one does. But sometimes Molly wonders - was it Caleb?

If it was, he wouldn’t know what to say. Gratitude and resentment all mixed in. He is glad he’s alive, in a kind of distant way, but more than that he wishes he’d come back without the memory of dying. If it was Caleb brought him back, he - He should have known better than to make Molly climb out of a grave for the second time in his life.

He’ll never ask. He’d rather not know.

He steps closer. He watches Caleb lick his finger and turn a page. Frumpkin is draped across Caleb’s shoulders like a scarf. It hurts, watching him. It hurts and Molly is so tired of hurting. He doesn’t know what to do with this. He doesn’t know what to do with anything.

He clears his throat.

“Hey,” he says.

Caleb looks up. When he sees Molly he gets that tiny smile. His Molly smile. 

“You’re back.”

“Yeah,” Molly says. “Were you waiting up for me?”

Caleb looks away, puts a bookmark in his book. “I was not tired.”

Not an answer.

“You don’t - I can look after myself.”

Silence. And in the weight between them, Molly’s death. When he couldn’t look himself. When he was gone, for six months. 

When Molly came back, when everyone saw him again, it was chaos. It was too much, far too much. Crying and hugging and touching and grief and love and -

Caleb had hung back, just looking at him. Just looking, that was all. Looking at him like it was all he wanted to see.

“I was not tired,” Caleb says again. “But since you are back, I may as well go to bed. You need your rest.”

Molly scoffs. If anyone needs rest, it’s Caleb. His eyes look bruised with dark shadows.

“You don’t need to share with me every time we’re at an inn,” Molly says. “Not if it’s keeping you awake.”

“It is not you that keeps me awake,” Caleb says. He scritches Frumpkin behind one furry ear, and encourages the cat off his shoulders. Frumpkin flicks an irritated tail when Caleb stands. He steps towards Molly, slow and measured like Molly- like he’s a wild animal, just as likely to attack as to flee. The gentleness is infuriating. He doesn’t -

“Your choice,” he says, and heads up the stairs to their shared room.

Caleb’s soft tread is a little behind him. He is tight and itchy between his shoulder blades, sore and sticky from being fucked. The stranger bit Molly on his neck, during, bruised him hard. He wonders if Caleb can see it. It a brief burst of vicious spite, he wants Caleb to see it. Serve him right. Serve him right for wanting so obviously, but never acting on it. Because if Caleb thinks he’s subtle with his yearning, he’s very, very wrong.

It was right there when Caleb saw him for the first time after he came back, right there in his broken face, right there in the way one hand raised and trembled and fell back and it is not Molly’s fault that it was far too much fucking pressure when he was still thin and shaking and barely verbal. Again. All his hair matted to his face so that three days later Jester sat him down with a pair of scissors and tears in her eyes and cut the tangles out. 

The anger and spite dissolved in the time it takes to get to the room. He’s never been good at holding onto it. He wishes he was - it would be better than this huge numb aching.

He sits on the bed heavily. It’s cheap. No feather beds for him. This is a sack, stuffed with straw and horsehair, with a sheet over it. It’s fine. He stares at the floor. Why can’t he feel better? He’s alive. He should be happy, swallowed up by the gratitude for every breath in his lungs and beat of his heart.

Caleb hovers, until Molly pats the bed next to him. He thinks about telling Caleb that he fucked a stranger tonight, and came thinking of Caleb’s hands on his face. He thinks about taking Caleb to bed and no doubt spoiling everything. He doesn’t do either of those. Instead, Molly lets Caleb sit next to him.

Caleb doesn’t let people touch him often. He is a guarded man. Twitchy and wary. But Molly’s head in his lap - apparently that’s fine. Molly closes his eyes and lets Caleb touch his hair, his horns, with hesitant, fragile touches. Lets him touch the bruise on Molly’s neck. Gets half hard from it. He imagines that’s what being a teenager is like. He wouldn’t know. He never was one.

It’s not the first time. It’s not every night, but probably once in every three that this happens, without words or questions. He puts his head in Caleb’s lap and lets Caleb touch him. It’s more intimate than sex. It means more, though he’s scared naming it will chase the meaning away.

He doesn’t know what he’s doing or why.

This fixes nothing. But it feels nice, and uncomplicated, and right now that’s the best Molly can hope for.


	2. (And I Hate) Disintegration

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> cw for claustrophobia, panic attacks.

He’s been tense and seething all day, stuck in a series of small, close rooms connected with dirt tunnels, of all things, and - and there was soil in his eyes, it fell in his eyes so his heart went tight and he wanted to claw his way out.

He hates how soil feels under his claws now.

So they’re resting, or trying to in Molly’s case. It’s been rough. Molly’s wanted to come back out on adventures with them. The first few months they kept leaving him behind, and when all his friends were gone he was terrified, feeling like he might dissolve into mist without them there. They let him come now, and it is ‘let’ him. He’s not much good to anyone. Either he got weak or they got stronger, but it’s like he’s more burden than help. And every time he gets hurt suddenly he is surrounded by people he loves with wide anxious eyes and jittery movements.

He wishes they’d stop. Every time Jester flutters around him, wasting healing, it makes him want to scream.

So maybe that’s what does it.

He’s got his eyes closed and his head leaning back against the wall and he’s trying to think of open skies instead of being underground. He’s trying so hard that his fists are clenched, his claws biting through his clothes and into his thighs. The small sharp pain of it reminds him he’s real, that the year he’s spent above the ground is real, that it’s not some hallucination as he suffocates and dies for the third time in the grave his friends left him in.

Every heartbeat, every steady breath is a reminder. It’s work, keeping those breaths as steady as they are.

And then Caleb is there, tapping his leg to get his attention and when he opens his eyes it’s dark and it stinks of damp earth and he can’t breathe. He can’t breathe.

And what he says, in his new brittle voice, is “Get the fuck off me!”

Caleb pulls back. He looks - he looks really hurt and that just irritates Molly more. How dare Caleb be hurt over this. How dare he? Caleb doesn’t know this is like. He doesn’t know what dying feels like. It feels awful. 

“Mollymauk-” Caleb says.

“No! Don’t touch me! Stop touching me!”

“I am not touching you, Molly -” Caleb says, very reasonably, and Molly knows he’s being - ridiculous and awful and - but he can’t stop. “I will not touch me if you say not to. Please, what is wrong -”

“What’s wrong is that none of you will leave me alone. “ Molly clutches his knees close to him and tries not to show how badly he’s shaking. “We’re - we’re underground. We’re underground and I am trying to - but you won’t let me. You won’t let me forget. Not one of you will let me forget that I died.”

He’s pretty much shouting now, and they are all looking at him. He hates it, hates it, hates it.

“It’s, uh. Molly, it’s pretty hard to forget,” Beau says, and her sensitivity is the worst thing ever because Beau shouldn’t be nice to him.

“Oh, “ he says, laughing without any humour, “Oh, you think it’s hard to forget. I - Please -”

He doesn’t want to be admitting this. He doesn’t want to be talking about this at all.

“Just - stop treating me like I’m going to fucking break, and then we can get out of here. That’s what I want, and please stop - stop distracting me when I’m trying to deal with being underground!”

“Molly -” and why are they acting so concerned. They weren’t concerned when they put him underground.

“Oh shut up,” he says. “Stop acting like any of you care.” He doesn’t mean this. Why can’t he stop from saying it? “You weren’t there. You left me. Not one of you stayed.” Six months, he reminds himself. But he hadn’t known that when he got up above ground again and was all alone. “I died and you just left me. I died and none of you were there.”

It’s awful. His throat is thick and sore and blocked, his eyes hot and prickling. He knows it’s not true. But he’d come back to life alone, and walked to find them alone and it had been so terrible, so dreadful. And then everyone was glad to see him and he was just full of this howl - alonealonealone you left me alone. He promised himself he’d never say it. They’d suffered after he died, he knew that.

He’s saying it now.

He’s saying it over and over and over. His face is in his hands and he’s probably not making much sense but -

He’s saying it.

Until his breath is coming too short and thick and he can’t breathe and it’s too much like dying, it’s too much like coming back.

“I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe. I can’t breathe,” he says, between gasps.

“I am sorry,” Caleb says, quietly. “I am so sorry you were alone.”

Molly grasps out blindly, and finds Caleb’s arm. He grips hard, knowing he must be hurting, bruising, and not caring at all. 

“Stop being such a shit to us!” Beau shouts, and Molly wants to laugh. Finally. This is what it takes for one of them to treat him halfway normally.

“Beau, Actually Molly has had a really hard time, actually, and I think -”

“Oh, like he’s the only one with trauma in this room.”

This time Molly does laugh, between desperate panicky gasps. He thinks his claws might be making Caleb bleed. Perhaps he should never have come back. Perhaps he should have stayed dead.

“Beau’s right,” he manages, “There’s - there’s no excuse -”

“When I say stop being a shit to us, I’m including you, Molly,” Beau says. “Stop being a shit to you, too.”

“I can’t bear being underground,” he says. “I can’t stand it. It just- it scares me so much.”

Saying it - oh. It’s not better. He’s still underground and that’ll never be ok. But it feels lighter. The burden of his fear on many shoulders instead of just his own.

“Duuuh,” says Jester. “Being underground is terrible. But it’s not forever. I promise.”

Not forever. It isn’t forever. He’ll be out of here.

“Promise me,” he says. “If I die down here, you won’t leave me. Take me out to the sun. Let me rot above ground. Please.”

“I promise,” Caleb says.

Molly breathes.

-

He doesn’t die. They fix things. The village that paid them is no longer cursed. It’s going to be fine.

What matters is being above ground, and breathing again. What matters is the space above and around him.

He manages to celebrate with the village, his old face on. A woman flirts with him and he flirts back, but he doesn’t take it further than that. He has a worrying feeling that he’d cry after, right now, and it doesn’t seem fair to put that on her.

Instead, he slips off to bed, lies under the wool blanket and stares up at the ceiling. He’s not dead. He’s alive. He’s not underground. He’s not alone. 

He manages to sleep. Until he doesn’t, until he’s awake with his heart hammering.

He’s not alone. There’s a weight on the side of his bed, a warmth of a body. It’s Caleb, he can already tell from the sound of his breathing.

“Caleb,” he says.

There’s a pause, and then Caleb says “Ja?”. His voice is strained.

“Are you alright?”

A short laugh. “Are you?”

It’s easier to be honest in this warm darkness, in this fragile closeness.

“No,” Molly says. “But I’m alive.”

“You are. I had - I had a dream -”

“Me too.”

“You are alive,” Caleb sounds pleading, desperate. “You are. You are here, and alive. This is not - it is not -”

Molly finds Caleb’s hand. It’s shaking. He takes it, and presses it to his chest, where Molly’s heart pounds. Lets Caleb feel his beating heart. Lets Caleb feel the warmth of a living Molly.

“I’m here,” he says.


	3. Give Me Pain

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Molly fucks up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey, be careful going in friends. This chapter contains a character trying to self destruct through sexual advances.

Molly is well on his way to drunk. He was hoping for the great rush of affectionate wellbeing, the ‘fuck it all, let’s have a good time’, but what he got.

Ha. Apparently what he got these days was the knowledge that the free-floating panic that he normally kept crushed down in a ball - that shit floated. He drank more to try to drown it but instead -

Something’s wrong, something’s wrong, something’s wrong. Well, maybe. Probably. Definitely. But there’s nothing he can do about it and he doesn’t want to worry anyone -

Way to fix this is to go get laid. Choke all this fear up in pure physical - find someone as mean as possible. Someone who won’t care. He wants - he wants -

He wants to be broken. This happens. It has happened before. The yawning open grave fills everything he sees and does and touches and it’s all he can know and - well. If it was logical and sensible and healthy he wouldn’t need to do it. 

He’s just trying to find something, anything, that makes it better for a bit. 

But he keeps failing at it. There’s usually someone - someone who wants the taboo of fucking a tiefling. He used to not, with those people, but - there’s something in it, in how it makes him feel. How little they care. Why should anyone care enough to be careful with his body? He’s dead. No. He’s not. He was dead. He’s alive now.

Sometimes he still feels dead.

That’s what tonight is. Not that he’s thinking that clear or strongly. He just knows he wants to be fucked, and hurt, and treated like shit.

And he can’t find anyone to do it.

The panic is rising. He feels like he might by dying. Again.

Which is when he remembers Caleb, who is in their shared room. Caleb who wants him, and is obvious about it.

He walks upstairs with the brittle high spirits of a man who’s decided to break everything he loves. He hates himself for it, but he’s looking forward to it too. When Caleb has given up on him, so will everyone else, and then the pressure to get better will be gone. He can go be terrible and broken in some rundown inn for the rest of his miserable life.

In an awful kind of way, it’ll be a relief to get it over and done with. He knows he’s a burden, and that they want him gone. It’ll be easier for everyone to make the decision now, and at least he won’t always be on edge, waiting.

He’s really very drunk. When he turns his head the world takes a moment to catch up.

He’s outside the door. He could change his mind, go back downstairs, and drink himself into unconsciousness.

Instead, he opens the door.

Caleb is in bed. He’s reading, by some magical light he cast. He looks beautiful under it. He looks up as Molly comes in and closes the door behind him. 

“Mollymauk? Are you well?”

“Fine,” Molly says. He shrugs off his coat and drapes it over his bed, then his shirt. He stumbles a little on his own feet on his way over to Caleb. Fuck.

“Hey,” he says, landing on his knees on the bed. His bones are loose in his skin. 

Caleb’s face is solemn and blank, his eyes steady. Molly’s going to make that change, one way or another.

He leans over, clumsy.

“So,” he says. “We gonna fuck, or not?”

“Was?”

Molly crawls towards him and kisses him.

It’s not like he fantasised, because when he fantasised, this wasn’t for all the wrong reasons.

Caleb’s mouth is still under his, and he hates himself, and his mind is a spiral of noise and -

Caleb pulls away. Molly can see his face clear, even in the dark. Caleb is often hard to read. It makes it far too easy to put what you expect to see on his face. He almost wants to see disgust, it’d be what he deserves. His grave-dirt mouth on a clean living one. Can Caleb taste it too?

“You want me,” he says, sick and dizzy, his heart pounding. “You want me, I can tell.”

Caleb does, it’s true, Molly sees it every day, feels it between them, a crackling, jittery thing. Skittering around between them in shared rooms and beds, building up in mutual gazes and warm touches. It was there before Molly died, and isn’t this the funniest thing - he didn’t follow up on it. It needed to be Caleb, because Caleb carried his damage like it was a shroud, and he was the ghost inhabiting it.

Funny haha. Funny weird.

“I -” Caleb says, and then “Molly -” He looks so lovely.

“Caleb, please. You want me, it’s so obvious. You make it so obvious. I’m here. I’m offering. I don’t care what you do, you can do whatever you want - I won’t - I just -”

“That is not what I want,” Caleb says, slowly and carefully. His voice is controlled. “This is not -”

Molly sits back.

“I don’t understand,” he says. His eyes are wet. “I’m giving you what you want. You can even -“ his voice is very small. He hugs himself, tight. What is he doing?

Caleb pushes Molly away. Molly goes. He’s a lot of things, but not that. Molly goes where Caleb pushes and Caleb gets off the bed and stands by it, his arms crossed.

“Do not use me like this,” he spits out.

Molly tries not to make a single sound. He digs his claws into his bare arms. He is shivering, his skin coming up in goosebumps. Could be cold, could be the sick panic that Molly just wants gone, whatever that costs. He wants to reach out for Caleb, to grasp him close.

That first night Molly was back with his friends, after all the awful confused lost time on the road, he’d curled his hands into Caleb’s shirt and not let go. They’d let it be, everyone had let it be. It was the only thing that kept him from screaming. The fabric under his fingers, the smell of Caleb in his nose.

It’s been months since he first let go, since he first was able to. He wants it again now. He broke it. He broke it like he wanted to and now he regrets it.

“I will not - “ Caleb says in a choked, rigid voice. 

“I don’t understand,” Molly repeats.

“You cannot just - I will not hurt you, no matter how you act.”

“Please. Please. I just want someone to -,” Molly says. He refuses to cry. He’s cried more this last year than he remembers ever doing before. It doesn’t make anything better. It just makes him feel weak.

“Someone,” Caleb says. “Anyone. Not me. This is -” he sighs. 

“Molly.” His voice is steady, flat. He sounds tired. “You are drunk, and very upset. If you sleep, you will feel better.”

“Don’t you want me?” It’s his last, desperate attempt. 

“Drunk, crying, and acting like this? No.”

Molly was crying after all. He’d barely even noticed. His face is numb.

“Maybe you’re right,” he says. He is utterly humiliated. It sits in him like poison. “You’re right. Of course you are. Of course you’re right.”

He staggers towards his own bed, lies down and looks at the wall. He looks at the wall and hears Caleb get back into bed and the whisper of a long, shuddering sigh. He looks at the wall and eventually he passes out.

When he wakes up the blankets are around his shoulders and there is water by his bed, but Caleb is not in the room.


	4. These Little Earthquakes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> the boy CAN LEARN

Surprise. Molly did a shitty thing and it spoiled everything. Caleb doesn’t seem to have mentioned his failed and selfish and utterly awful seduction attempt. Caleb seems to be trying to be normal with him. They stayed sharing the room until it was time to move on, and then not, but sleeping arrangements on the road have always been a little slapdash, a lot based on who watches when. 

It just - there’s a tension between them now. There always has been, but this one feels different, rawer.

They sit around the fire and eat and they don’t talk to each other. Because Caleb is often quiet, and Molly doesn’t know what to say. 

This is the main difference: Caleb doesn’t touch him so much, so gently, so easily. Molly has got used to gentle brushes of fingers on his arms and hands. Precious contact gone, and he didn’t realise how much he loved it until it was gone.

He only has himself to blame.

The thing is - he’s kind of tired of this. Of feeling so awful, and being awful to the people he cares about. He shouldn’t have done what he did, it’s as simple as - no matter how miserable he is, he didn’t have the right.

He can’t figure out how to fix it.

So instead of trying and maybe making it worse, he does nothing, and he thinks, and he hates himself a little more with every day he sees Caleb so cautious around him.

Until one night he’s on watch with Caduceus Clay.

Caddy’s alright, pretty nice and easy to spend time with. At the start of things Molly couldn’t help feeling replaced, all angry that it took his friends less than a week to slot a new person into the gap he left, but he wasn’t angry with Caddy. He’s pretty impossible to be angry with. And he’s smart, too. Not like Caleb is smart, all razor-sharp brain, terrifying and kind of hot, but smart all the same.

Molly doesn’t mean to start talking, but it’s like he’s been wanting to, and stuff spills out of him with alarming honesty. He’s even honest about why he tried to seduce Caleb. To ruin things.

“Thing is,” he says, “It’s like I didn’t want to, but I did it anyway. I knew it was a shitty way to behave to my friend, but there I went.”

He hunches over, shoulders tight.

Caddy makes a noise of acknowledgement.

“It’s just - “ Molly continues “I wish I could go back and do something different. I wish I hadn’t been so unkind. I want - I - care about Caleb a lot.”

“Hmmm. Well. Maybe this is a bit out there, but… have you tried saying that?”

Molly’s brain goes blank. It cannot be that simple. Surely if it were that easy, he’d have done that.

“I can’t do that,” he says. “That’s not - what if he is still angry at me even after?”

Caddy just stares at him.

“I guess - he’d be allowed to be?”

“Apologising isn’t about getting forgiveness, it’s about acknowledging how you hurt someone.”

Molly supposes that’s true. All the same, he doesn’t immediately rush off to lay his regret at Caleb’s feet, like Frumpkin with a rat. 

If he’s honest with himself, and maybe he finally has to be - he’s scared. 

“I changed,” his says. If Caddy thinks it’s a weird change of topic he doesn’t say anything. “I changed, and I don’t know myself and I hate it. I thought I had a handle on who I was, and now I don’t.”

Caddy puts one big, heavy hand on Molly’s shoulder.

“There is nothing I can say to fix this for you, Molly. Only time and patience can do that. I can say that we all change, all the time.”

That’s - not helpful. He wants to be fixed, immediate and instant. He wants to have never changed, or to be able to change back. The idea of a slow, stumbling path to whatever unknown lies ahead is exhausting.

But it seems like it might be the only option.

Molly looks behind him to the tent Caleb sleeps in. If he lets himself, he can imagine a pulsing light there, directing him. This is who you want, who you need. In reality, the tent is a darker shadow against the night.

Molly sighs.

Sneaking into Calebs tent to wake him up and apologise is… obviously not an option. It’ll have to wait.

It waits longer than he wants. Because first they’re travelling, and he’s not having this conversation crammed in the back of a cart with their friends pretending they aren’t listening. And then there’s this whole mess with some kind of Necromancy cult and that gets really weird and everyone is exhausted. Bloodstained and limping and bruised and Molly is so tired he can’t think, let alone talk about something that matters.

And then maybe it’s too long? It’s been too long? But maybe he’s being a coward. The longer he leaves it the worse it will be.

He doesn’t want to do this. But he needs to do this.

Finally he has a chance. They are resting. People are out shopping. Caleb is not.

He takes a deep breath and goes for it.

“Caleb,” he says.

Caleb looks up at him. He needs a shave. He always needs a shave, but it’s worse now. Molly thinks about how it would feel to have that stubble rub against his skin.

He can’t have that. It’s best not to think about it.

“Can we talk?” he says instead. “Somewhere private?”

Caleb’s face goes guarded.

“Why?”

“I have some important stuff to say to you.”

Caleb looks at him a little longer, then nods, slow. He closes his book and keeps it in his hand as they head upstairs, into an empty bedroom.

Molly sits on the bed, bounces a little. He’s full of nervous energy.

“What is it?” 

“I - I wanted to tell you that I’m sorry. About - about trying to. Um. Seduce you. It was cruel and - and I wish I hadn’t done it. And I’m sorry. And it won’t happen again.”

Caleb looks down at his hands. “Ah, no,” he says. “It is alright.”

“It’s not though, is it? It’s not alright. You deserved better than that.” Caleb is shaking his head. “You do deserve better than that. I - you matter to me. You’re my friend. You’ve been nothing but good to me since - well, since, and I treated you like shit. I’m sorry.”

“You are forgiven..”

“You don’t have to forgive -”

Caleb looks up. His mouth is quirked up at one side and he looks - amused?

“I know. Allow me to decide if you are forgiven or not, hm? I am the one you hurt. And besides. You did not mean it.”

There is a chasm under that last sentence, and in it Molly realises something very important in a great rush.

Caleb will never ever believe Molly wants him. Caleb will never believe Molly feels anything other than friendship. That’s what he pays to still have Caleb in his life.

It’s going to have to be OK. Because there’s nothing else he can do, and Molly would rather have this than nothing. Molly would do almost anything to make sure Caleb still feels safe and comfortable around him. Molly would do anything to see his small smiles.

And that’s the second thing Molly realises. This isn’t a crush on a hot friend, his normal idle wanting of the beautiful and brilliant people around him.

Oh, he thinks.

Oh, Caleb. I think I love you.


	5. Change Their Colour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> :)

That’s a new thing to worry about. Love. Is it even love? He’s been clung to Caleb since he resurrected, not letting go. Is it love, or is it just that Caleb is all that’s made him feel halfway like himself for the last year?

He’s not going to fuck up again. He refuses. He’s going to get better. He’s going to figure out who he is now.

There was once a time where no matter how bad it was for him, he had a space for joy. Even when he hurt he could never ignore a sunset. He just kept the beauty and the hurting in two different parts of his heart,

Since he came back, there have been no sunsets, or sunrises, or white flowers in the hedgerows. There has only been the hurting. It shocks him, to realise that this has been the problem all along. He had something that made life bearable even when it shouldn’t have been, and then it went away.

No wonder he felt so lost.

So he tries. That’s all he can do, try. He forces himself to notice loveliness that was always obvious before. And it’s there, in the details. A pink flower climbing stone ruins. The way the light glints off water. The smell of fresh turned earth and crushed grass.

They’re there, and in the knowing of them there is the lightest brush of his old joy. 

It’s not enough. And getting better is so hard on his own.

He says this aloud at one point, to Yasha. Who frowns at him, and in her gentle voice says

“Molly. You aren’t alone. You are surrounded by your friends.”

Oh. Yeah.

In his defense, he never claimed to be smart.

So he starts small. 

To Jester he confesses his new fear of inside dark, of small close spaces. It becomes a talk about their fears in general, and while it doesn’t make his fear go away, it makes him feel less alone and strange. To Fjord he talks about changing, and about the anxiety over what it means. And he feels less frightened about what the future holds. To Beau - well, he calls Beau a shit and she calls him a fucker, and that makes him feel better, like he is stronger, like things are normal. When they’re done sniping she puts a hand on his shoulder.

“We missed you,” she says, looking anywhere but his face.

“Aww,” he says, genuinely touched. 

“Don’t tell anyone I said it. I’ll deny it.”

And each one - they aren’t magic. He doesn’t wake up one morning and find himself full of bright, sparkling joy. Or even a shadowed, more complicated kind. It’s not magic. But he can feel the shape of a self taking form.

He feels a story forming.

A bad thing happened to him. For a little while it broke him. And then slowly he got better. Never the same as before, different now, but better. A little sadder, a little wiser, with a new fear of small places. And a love that doesn’t fade.

So that answers that, he supposes. It wasn’t his weakness telling him he was in love. It was love, hiding in his suffering, finding every way out it could. The paths it had to take were dangerous, so no wonder it looked so different when it arrived.

He clung to Caleb at his worst because that bruised and aching love was the closest to his old joy he had had.

But now, as he recovers, the love brightens too. Becomes jewellike, gleaming. Becomes soft and sweet and honest. Become well with him.

It’s terrifying, how big it is. It seems bigger than he can contain.

It finds its outlet in gestures.

“Eat, Caleb,” he says, with a plate or a bowl in his hand, the brief distracted smile enough to live on for years.

“Bed time, Caleb,” he says in the small hours, when night birds cry out.

“It’s alright, Caleb,” he says, when Caleb’s own fears strike.

Taking care of Caleb, like Caleb takes care of him. Paying it back. It’s love that drives him. He is powerless under the rolling weight of it, under the brief warmth of Caleb’s hands. Helpless for the bright sky that is Caleb’s eyes. Helpless, helpless.

One day, one day after weeks of slow improvement and regular slide backs, one day Molly is awake before dawn, One day Molly sits and watches the sun rise.

He sits at a high place and watches dawn break over a valley, the clouds blush pink and gold. The lake far beneath him reflects the colours, the light, throws light back at him in diamond flashes. Birds sing in simple welcome of the day.

It takes him a moment to realise that what he's feeling is pure and simple joy, for the first time since he came back. It makes him laugh and cry, here in the light, here alive, here Molly.

“It’s going to be a lovely day,” he says to himself, wiping his face.

Things might just work out all right. He folds this moment up, tucks it away inside him, to remember on the bad days.

He will value joy more now, knowing how hard it was to win back. 

His silence is broken by a swishing of the grass behind him, a person moving through. He turns his head and sees Caleb, standing awkward, hands clasped, and utterly welcome.

“Caleb,” he says, with a wide smile. “Come and take a look at this view.”

“There you are,” Caleb says, with his Molly smile. He sits beside Molly. “A lovely sight. Jester said she saw you come this way.”

“You were looking for me?”

“It has been suggested - ah - there are things -um. May I start again?”

“I could listen to you all day,” Molly says. “Whatever you want to say is good.”

Caleb huffs out a little air through his nose.

“I wished to talk with you about something.”

“Oh?” Molly’s heart is beating hard, and he doesn’t know why.

“It has been suggested to me that I am being foolish, and that the only way I can have an answer to this question is to ask you. Mollymauk. Molly.” Caleb takes a deep breath. He is formal, and stilted, like he often is when nervous. It’s endearing; it makes Molly feel soft about him. “I want you to know you do not have to say yes, and I will not hold it against you if you say no.”

“You have me curious, Mr Caleb. What could possibly be so important?”

Caleb rolls his eyes. “You are teasing me,” there is no edge to his words. “I have come to say. I should like very much to um. Court you.” Caleb winces. “With an eye to, uh, a long term relationship.”

It takes Molly a moment. It is so very formal, it shouldn’t be sweet. But it is. So this is how Caleb says ‘I like you, want to make a go of it?’

Molly wants to laugh, but he doesn’t want Caleb to misunderstand.

“This courting,” he says. “Will it involve kissing?”

Caleb goes a lovely red. “I believe that is traditional, yes.”

“Hmmm. Then… yes,” Molly says. “Yes, that sounds… ha, great. I like you too, Caleb. I - I like you a lot. I want to try.”

Caleb looks at him like he’s heard the exact answer he wasn’t expecting. “Really?” his face lights up with hope.

“Really,” Molly says. “Let me prove it to you.”

And Molly leans into the kiss he’s been wanting forever.

It’s so much better when it’s for the right reasons. It’s so much better when it comes from love and desire. Caleb’s lips slide against his, warm and slick. His mouth is warm and tastes of, well, mouth, but it’s Caleb’s mouth, which makes it special. There’s a warmth in him, waiting to turn into an inferno. He kisses Caleb under the rising sun and Caleb kisses him back. Caleb’s hand comes up to Molly’s cheek.

When he breaks away his eyes glitter. 

“Oh, Molly,” he says, pressing his forehead against Molly’s own. “This is real? You mean it this time?”

A stab of guilt. “It’s real, Caleb. I promise. I mean it. I mean it. I want this. I want you.”

Caleb laughs shakily against Molly’s mouth.

“I thought you would say no,” he says, wondering, and kisses him again.

It’s properly daylight by the time they walk back to their friends, hand in hand, waiting for Jester’s delighted shriek.


	6. Give Me Life

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> this is just smut

Caleb builds them a mansion, out of his mind, out of his magic. It’s the best and hottest thing Molly has ever seen.

Before he builds it, he asks Molly, in a shy voice, if Molly wants a shared room, one bed.

Of course Molly does.

So that’s what they have, with a luxurious, comfortable bed, and a bathroom just off it. 

Molly has hopes. Not expectations. He will take this at Caleb’s pace. It’s very new, this… courting. A few days old at best. There’s been kissing, there’s been Caleb’s hands stroking his sides, above his clothes. There’s been Caleb’s hand in his. It’s all like magic, each of them filling him with a sense of newness and freshness, because he has done this and more with many, but he’s never done this in particular, and he’s never been in love, and it’s never been Caleb.

So all in all, a lot of new things. 

And if sometimes that new sadness, that new fear climbs in and whispers lies to him; well. He know they’re lies now, even if they still hurt.

So, hopes. He has them. He has hopes of Caleb naked, of making Caleb come. He’s had those, even back when they were hopeless fantasies. Detailed, filthy, loving. He’s imagined a thousand ways Caleb might sound when he comes. How he might look.

They have their own room. Their own room in a magical mansion, and Molly’s hopes lead to making sure he is very, very clean in the wonderful bathroom Caleb has made for him.

He likes being naked. He likes his body. He lounges in their (their!) bed naked, and drifts off into a happy, nude nap. Not fully asleep, just drifting, dozing.

Caleb’s soft cough brings him out of it, back to the real world. He stretches, luxuriant.

“Hmm, there you are.”

Caleb is wearing an actual nightshirt, in the soft warm cream of natural, undyed linen. It should look ridiculous, with it’s long sleeves and the way it hangs almost to his knees. It doesn’t. It looks charming and perfectly, perfectly Caleb.

“You are naked,” Caleb says.

“I am. I used to sleep naked, remember?”

“Hmm. So this is not you trying to tempt me?”

Molly laughs, soft. “Is it working? Do you want to be tempted?”

Caleb lies down on the bed next to him. He brushes some hair out of Molly’s face, tucking it behind his ear. Impossibly tender. Molly smiles, and knows all his love is right there, in his face.

Caleb doesn’t answer direct. “It has been a long time,” he says, “since I had any kind of lover. I would not want to disappoint you.”

“You won’t,” Molly says. “Caleb, you couldn’t. I’d be satisfied if I never got so much as a hand job for the next fifty years, if that’s how you want us to be. As long as it was you.”

Caleb smiles at him, and Molly feels dizzy.

“That is not how I want us to be,” he says.

“Oh, Good. Because I know what I just said, and I meant it but also, I would really like to um. Have sex with you. At some point, when you want to.”

Caleb kisses him. It is always good, it is always wonderful, his lips sliding. Molly opens his mouth, lets Caleb have him. His world narrows to these things; Caleb’s hand on Molly’s hip, Caleb’s tongue in Molly’s mouth, Caleb’s stubble under Molly’s hand.

Then Caleb moves, rolls, and is on top of Molly, pushing his hips down. He’s hard. If Molly ever doubted that Caleb truly wanted him, he doesn’t now with Caleb kissing him like he’s drowning and Molly is the air he breathes, with Caleb’s cock hard and hot through the nightshirt, against Molly’s thigh.

When their lips part, he looks up at Caleb, who is flushed to the roots of his hair, his pupils blown wide.

“I do not want to disappoint you,” he says again. “But I want to touch you so badly. Show me how, Molly. Show me how to touch you how you like.”

“Undress for me first, darling, please. I want to see you.”

Caleb seems uncertain, a little shy, but he strips off his nightdress in one efficient movement, revealing the entirety of him to Molly’s hungry gaze. He’s slim. Not too thin, as he used to be, but still very slender with prominent hip bones and a narrow chest. He’s freckled everywhere the sun touches and in some places it doesn’t, and the skin under the freckles is milk, with a touch of pink. His belly is soft, and his cock is hard and beautiful, flushed, the foreskin pulled back enough to reveal the damp red tip.

Molly looks at him, and looks some more, and could never ever get enough.

“Come here,” he says, his voice rough.

Caleb comes to Molly willingly, and remembering his request, Molly takes Caleb’s hand in his and wraps it around his cock. He gasps a little at the first touch.

“Like this,” he says. “Slow and tight. Ex- Explore, if you want, I won’t mind.”

Caleb does explore, dragging his hand down and back up again, swiping his thumb across the tip. It hits Molly like a blow and his hips jerk.

“Just like that. I - I like it like that. Take your time.”

Caleb’s confidence grows with every moan and gasp Molly makes, so he doesn’t even try to keep quiet, letting Caleb know just how much he likes it, just how good those clever, calloused fingers feel on his dick.

Caleb’s gaze flicks between Molly’s face and Molly’s dick, and then he seems to make a decision.

He bends down and takes the tip into his pretty pink mouth.

Molly swears in infernal, the wet silken inside of Caleb’s mouth, his clever swirling tongue - it’s a lot. It’s better than he imagined, dreamed, with his own hand working himself.

If he had to put it down to anything it’d be how long he’s been since he had good sex. Or perhaps the fact that it’s Caleb. But he’s close alarmingly fast and while the thought of coming in Caleb’s mouth definitely appeals, he wants to give Caleb the choice.

“I’m close,” he says. “Gods, Caleb, my love, I’m so close.”

Caleb pulls off his dick and Molly takes a moment to mourn the lack of it.

But then Caleb looks him in the eye and says “I want you to come while I’m fucking you,” and yes. Yes please.

He manages to say that in words, and then Caleb has leant over him to pull something from the bedside cabinet, which puts one small pink nipple right in mouth range, and well, Molly can’t resist.

Caleb hums as Molly tongues his nipple, and runs his fingers through Molly’s hair.

“I have plans, Mollymauk,” he says in a slightly strained voice.

“Who am I to stand in the way of your plans?” Molly says.

He leans back on his elbows and watches as Caleb opens a jar of slick. It looks nice. Fancy.

He brings one knee up and tilts his hips, hopeful, teasing.

“Incorrigible,” Caleb murmurs. “I don’t know what else I expected.”

He strokes one slick finger around Molly’s rim, gentle and not enough. 

“I like - oh - I like this bit fast,” Molly says, breathless.

“Hmm,” Caleb says. “But I would like to learn you.”

There is something in that, this mental image of Caleb studying him like one of his books, putting all that intelligence and focus to bear on figuring out the best way to make Molly scream. It makes him a little dizzy. He has to lie back.

Caleb’s hands. If Molly could write poetry, he would write millions of words about Caleb’s hands. Clever, thin fingers, dextrous and graceful, strong and able. Touching him so frustratingly not enough while Caleb sucks him, also not enough.

He’s never been good at patience

“Please, please put your fingers in me. It’ll make me feel so good. Please.”

And Caleb, the monster, laughs at him.

He does as Molly asks though, one slick finger inside him, lighting him up.

“You’re so hot inside,” Caleb says.

“Get your dick in me,” Molly says. “Do you have any idea how long I’ve been wanting this?”

Caleb drops his head to mollys thigh and sucks a mark onto the delicate skin.

“Some,” he says, in the tone of a confession.

Caleb opens Molly up slowly, maddeningly, driving him out of his mind, making him thrash and arch against the bedsheets. It feels like an eternity before he slips his fingers out and pulls back to slick up his cock.

Molly is pleased to notice his hands shake.

Caleb takes Molly’s foot in his hands and presses a kiss to the arch, before moving it to get a better angle, draping it over his shoulder. He pushes in and Molly fights to keep his eyes open to see the concentration turn to lust and wonder as he seats himself fully in Molly’s body.

He breathes out in a great shuddery sigh and looks down at Molly, his wonderful face all open and amazed. Molly reaches up to cup his stubbly cheek in one hand.

“You feel so good inside me.”

Caleb hangs his head and says something breathless in Zemnian.

Molly loves him. Molly loves his face, and his eyes, and the bright gleams of gold and red in his hair, and how his cock feels inside Molly, and his freckly shoulders, and his smile. He loves his mind, and his quiet humour, and his grief. Molly loves Caleb, in all the ways Caleb is, even the difficult bits.

What he doesn’t love is that Caleb won’t fucking move.

He grinds down to get friction, penetration.

“Who knew you were such a tease, Caleb Widogast,” he gasps out.

Caleb chuckles darkly. “I’ve had to learn patience.”

“Fuck your patience. Fuck me.”

Then, and only then, did Caleb finally start moving. Slow at first, but not gentle. One hand grasping the back of Molly’s thigh, the other on his face. Slow, and hard, and right. Molly arches into it, grabs at Caleb’s back and arse, groans loud and long when it’s too good not to.

Loses himself in it a while, lets himself be a creature experiencing, lets himself be pure sensation, safe and valued and wanted here. He is wanted, him, not just for how beautiful he is, or his flash, or the tiefling taboo. He is, Mollymauk, in his entirety.

He’s close, on the edge, and Caleb is keeping him there. He can’t come just from this, so he moves his hand down to his cock.

Caleb bats it away.

“No,” he growls. “I’ll do it. I’ll make you come.”

Fuck. That’s - wow. 

Molly can’t think any more though, because Caleb’s hand is on his dick, stroking him like Molly likes, and he is inside him making him see stars and it’s Caleb, it’s Caleb, who else could it have ever been?

Molly comes, and comes down with Caleb still and looking down on him with wide eyes and a wet open mouth.

“Keep going,” Molly begs. “I want you to finish in me.”

Caleb groans and fucks Molly in hard, rough, uncoordinated thrusts, hurting but good. It’s not long before he comes too, burying his face in Molly’s neck.

They float for a while, Caleb breathing harsh into his ear.

“I love you,” Molly says. It seems right. It seems real. “I’m sorry if it’s too soon, but it’s true. I love you.”

Caleb mutters something into his neck. Molly doesn’t need to hear it to know. He saw Caleb’s face.

They fall asleep together in their magical bed, and if love doesn’t fix everything it still makes a shelter over life. 

It’s never going to be perfect. There’ll be hard days. But it’ll be OK.

**Author's Note:**

> Title and chapter titles are from Little Earthquakes by Tori Amos. In which choice, I show my age.


End file.
